You Got Nothing Coming: Notes From a Prison Fish

by Jimmy A. Lerner

  It also appears that I am stuck with the nickname O.G.— "original gangsta"— that the Bone semifacetiously awarded me back in county jail. Kansas and his trailer-trash dawgs have adopted it, so I guess I better get down with it.

  Besides, it beats being called "bitch."

  Y'unnerstan' what I'm sayin'?

  * * *

  During the thirty-day intake processing phase, new fish are locked down twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. I had always had the idea (based on books and movies) that prisoners were legally entitled to a limited amount of fresh air and exercise. Nevada prisons neatly circumvent any such requirement by a "classification system."

  Once an inmate is assigned to general population and given a job (usually in the kitchen or laundry), he gains some freedom of movement throughout the yard. He is "classified."

  Fish are unclassified. Nonpersons.

  Kansas explained it this way. "We got nothin' comin'. Punk-ass cops think they're running a fucking supermax lockdown in the Fish Tank. It's outta line. No books, no canteen, no weight pile, no yard time, gotta eat in your fucking cell— it's scandalous! They try to pull this lockdown shit in Kansas and the shit would've jumped off big-time, unnerstan' what I'm sayin'? This fucking bullshit is outta line! In Kansas we'd of jacked up a few cops. We…"

  And on and on. Know what I'm sayin'?

  We are let out of our cells for ten minutes every other evening after chow. During this so-called "tier time," we can take a shower or line up to use one of the three phones on the lower tier.

  Bubblecop pushes some buttons every ten minutes to crack open only three cell doors at a time. In case a fight breaks out or the Shit Jumps Off (a riot), Bubblecop will only have to shoot six fish.

  The ten-minute limit imposed a tough choice. With Fish Tank temperatures rarely dropping below 100 degrees, we all wanted to take a cool shower. Of course, every fish also desperately longed to use the phone. No way to do both in ten minutes. Eight minutes actually— subtract two minutes for travel time to and from the showers and phones.

  Even though I was a graduate of the phone company's Time Management, Prioritization, and Multitasking training (with a framed certificate on my cubicle partition wall), it was Kansas who solved the equation. Kansas, who has managed more prison years than I have managed multitasking minutes.

  "Here's whatchu do, O.G. Same as me. You shower using the sink. Use the state soap and towel, dab a little with the toilet paper, and you are good to go. The second that punk-ass Bubblecop cracks open the crib, you fucking fly down the stairs and grab the phone. If some con tries to chump you off, pressures you, sweats you, you fuckin' stick 'im! Stick 'im right through the fucking throat!"

  I peered down from my tray to see Kansas busily sharpening the handle of his state toothbrush by scraping it back and forth across the rough surface of the concrete floor. A plastic prison shank was under construction.

  Don't leave your cell without one.

  Kansas glanced up at me and grinned. "A Bic pen works better, but until Skell brings me one I gotta work with the materials at hand, know what I'm sayin'?"

  "Kansas, that seems a little extreme, don't you think? Stabbing a guy over a phone call?"

  Kansas paused in his labors to admire the now lethally pointed end of the toothbrush. "It ain't about the phone call, O.G. It's about Respect." "Respect" is one of Kansas's favorite words and he always pronounces it as if it were capitalized— like "God."

  "Well, I think I'll try it without the toothbrush," I said.

  "Aiight, O.G. Do whatchu gotta do, dawg— do it your fucking fish way. Maybe you'll get to talk to your kids or your mom in about ten years."

  The instant the cell door popped open, I was moving like a cat (think of speed, not the grace) down the upper-tier catwalk, the steel guardrail on my left. Behind me I could hear the rapid footsteps of other fish on the same mission.

  "NO RUNNING!" Bubblecop screamed, pointing the muzzle of a rifle through the opening in the glass. I slowed down, took the stairs two at a time, and had my hand on the phone receiver when behind me another hand reached out and closed like a steel band on my neck.

  The hand was huge, black, and squeezing hard.

  I turned to confront the stuff of every white boy's prison nightmare: Big Black Bubba, except this monster looked more like Jabba the Hut from one of the Star Wars movies.

  "The phone be mines!" Jabba said, increasing the pressure on my neck. A sharpened toothbrush would have availed me doodley-squat against this black giant. I would have needed a small hydrogen bomb. Maybe two.

  Even taller than Kansas but fat. Fat beyond all reason. Fat beyond belief.

  Seven feet tall, at least a quarter ton of flab and bad attitude wearing filthy gray boxer shorts the size of a circus tent. An incongruously tiny cornrow head formed the apex of this mammoth.

  It was as if God, in a playful mood, had taken a giant spatula and slapped the behemoth's body together, piling one layer of jiggling lard on top of another. For six days. On the seventh He either rested or just ran out of enough clay to shape a full-size head.

  The grip on my neck didn't relax until I released the phone. The lips on the tiny head moved.

  "I's just fittin' to call my bitch— why don't you just get on line there behind the Bone. Wait yo turn befo' I bust yo dome."

  T-Bone, wearing nothing but boxers and his shower cap, glanced up at Bubblecop, who was conveniently on the phone, the rifle resting across his lap. The Bone voiced his disapproval at the state of prison phone etiquette.

  "Yo, Big Hungry— Hunger! That ain't right. Cain't a muthafucka make hisself a phone call without y'all acting up and shit? Mighty Whitey look down here, he fittin' to trip and shoot all our asses."

  The abomination known as Big Hungry ignored the Bone, started punching in the numbers for the collect call to his bitch. T-Bone tried to console me. "Go haid, O.G. Yo be befo' me. Cain't no muthafucka reason with the Hunger when he fittin' to talk to his bitch."

  The Hunger never did connect with his bitch that night. A mighty white hand reached out and pressed down on the switch hook. Tattooed in blue on the backs of the three fingers were the initials "N," "L," and "R."

  "Yo, Big Hungry— what's up? There a problem here?" Kansas was as casual and friendly as a life insurance salesman at a high school reunion.

  Big Hungry's mouth dropped open, dazzling us with two gold front teeth. A moment later the phone dropped from his bear claw and dangled on its steel cable.

  "Whassup, Kansas!" cried the Hunger, suddenly the soul of congeniality. "I thought you was out on pa-role!"

  "Was out seven months, Hunger— caught a fucking P.V. You ain't sweating my dawg, are you?"

  Hunger tilted his tiny head back and laughed so hard his cornrows vibrated along with the rest of his gelatinous bulk. "She-it, Kansas! Pa-role violation— that's some fucked-up shit! Nah, ain't nobody sweatin' your boy. I was just fittin' to take a shower." The Hunger lumbered off like a tame black bear. Kansas slid the toothbrush shank back under the elastic band of his underwear and climbed up the stairs to our cell.

  With three minutes remaining before lockdown, I was able to reach my mother in Florida, who promised to call my girls and give them my address so they could write.

  In answer to a mother's worried questions, I quickly assured her that my health was fine and I had plenty to eat. Right before Bubblecop screamed "Lock it down," my mother promised to send me a subscription to the Sunday New York Times so I could stay more or less current with the outside world.

  "Thanks, Mom. I love you."

  "I love you, Jimmy. Please take care of yourself in there."

  Click.

  My mother had a lifelong affection for the New York Times. As her life grew longer, she became more and more interested in the obituary section. She would drink her coffee at the kitchen table, reading the entries with intense fascination, then glance up to share the news with me.

  "Jimmy, remember Hymie Goldblatt— had
that little appetizer store on Flatbush Avenue?"

  I was happy to play straight man for my mom. "Yeah, Mom, what about him?"

  "Dead! Massive heart attack."

  "Sorry to hear that— he always gave me fresh chopped liver."

  A few minutes later, "Jimmy— remember Lenny Lipschitz?"

  "I think so. Didn't he teach that SAT preparation course?"

  "That's the one."

  "What about him?"

  "Dead! Massive stroke."

  And Mom would peek slyly up at me from the paper, both of us smiling at our shared morbid sense of humor.

  Bubblecop was still screaming "Lock it the fuck down" when I pulled the cell door shut behind me and climbed up on my cookie tray.

  Kansas was raving and ranting from the bottom bunk.

  "Ya see, O.G., even when we was trying to show the niggers some respect, started calling them 'toads' instead of 'niggers,' they still act like fuckin' animals. Fuck, dawg! In the Kansas pen a big fat black motherfucker like the Hunger would have been shanked from the jump, y'unnerstan' what I'm sayin'? No stand-up con going to put up with his shit. Next time, dawg, you gotta stand up for yourself, you gotta…"

  I lay back and closed my eyes, trying to tune Kansas out. Through the cinder block wall I could hear someone in the cell next door pounding something hard against the wall. Then some muted sobs.

  I missed my mommy.

  * * *

  Among the highlights of the Fish Tank calendar were the three meals a day. We would be let out of our cells to descend the stairs to the lower tier and pick up the trays that were wheeled in on steel carts by Skell and the porters.

  Strunk used a small hand counter to ensure that the number of trays handed out matched the latest fish head count. From high above, Bubblecop discouraged anyone from cutting ahead in line by occasional screams and brandishing a mini-14 through the horizontal slots in the glass bubble. Bubblecop preferred the mini-14 for mealtimes, since the magazine could hold forty rounds, any one of which would destroy a man's appetite. Permanently.

  We filled our Hard Time cups with milk for breakfast (coffee is a "privilege" reserved for general population inmates, who eat in the main chow hall), purple Kool-Aid for lunch, and orange Kool-Aid at dinner.

  After the culinary delights of the Las Vegas county jail served SW3 style, the breakfasts seemed wonderful to me: biscuits and gravy, hot oatmeal (served cold), sometimes a hard-boiled or scrambled egg, and always a piece of fruit, usually an apple or an orange (and no white mold).

  About a dozen five-sided steel tables were bolted to the floor of the lower tier, each small side extruding its own metal stool. These tables were reserved for the porters and other nonfish inmates who were temporarily housed in the Tank.

  New fish eat in their cells. We were given ten minutes.

  Using our sporks and our bunks as dining room tables, Kansas and I devoured every morsel on our trays that wasn't made of Styrofoam. I sat cross-legged on the upper tray listening to Kansas bitch from the bottom bunk.

  "This shit is outta line, O.G. In Kansas we got fucking sausage! We got bacon. Y'unnerstan' what I'm sayin' to you?"

  I was absurdly pleased by the utility of the spork, having just spooned in a mouthful of oatmeal and a chunk of egg at the same time. Talk about multitasking.

  "I understand, Kansas. Back in Kansas you were served steak and eggs every morning followed by lime sherbet to clear your palate before the lobster bisque—"

  "Keep up with that sideways shit, O.G., and I'll just reach up and snatch your old ass down here and peel your fucking onion."

  "My onion? Would that be Kansas-speak for my head?"

  "You pick shit up fast, O.G. All I'm sayin', dawg, is that you can't get no fucking pork in this punk-ass prison. The fucking Muslims, motherfucking sand niggers, raised so much shit about it being against their so-called religion that nobody can get ham. No bacon, no sausage— nobody got nothin' comin' because of these freaks." Kansas was working himself up into one of his psychotic rages. I automatically went into my Mirroring and Echoing mode.

  "That's outta line, Kansas."

  "O.G. This shit is so outta line it's off the hook, know what I'm sayin'?"

  "It's fuckin' scandalous, dawg!"

  "That's what I'm talking about, O.G."

  "I'm down wid that, bro."

  "O.G.?"

  "What's up, dawg?"

  "If you don't stop trying to talk like me, I will kill you, unnerstan' what I'm sayin'?"

  I had clearly reached the limitations of Mirroring and Echoing.

  "All right, Kansas. Sorry— I get carried away sometimes."

  "That's cool, dawg, I ain't sweatin' you."

  "Aiight then."

  Our ten minutes of quality time over, the cell door cracked open and we put the empty trays outside it (on the "front porch") for the porters to pick up.

  Kansas timed this routine perfectly, not closing the door until Skell had dumped our trays into a plastic garbage bag and handed Kansas another tray. Skell expertly positioned his cadaverous body to block Bubblecop's view. A fresh trickle of blood leaked from a scab on Skell's shaved head.

  Kansas put the tray— heaped generously with biscuits and eggs (no sausage, though)— under his bunk, then slow-played sliding the door shut.

  "Good looking out, Skell. Make sure you don't get crossed out behind this."

  "Ain't no thing, Kansas— got the fucking tray count wired, dawg, y'unnerstan' what I'm sayin'? The kitchen dawgs owe me. Fuck, I could getchu some—"

  "CELL 47! LOCK IT THE FUCK DOWN NOW!" Skell took a quick peek behind him at Bubblecop's mini-14 before slithering off to the next cell. Kansas locked us down.

  "Yogee, want some eggs? Biscuits?"

  "Thanks, Kansas, but I'm full."

  "Full? Straight-up business, dawg? 'Cause I take care of my cellies, know what I'm sayin'? It ain't no big thing, ain't even a chicken wing."

  "Okay, I'll take a chicken wing."

  "There you go again, leaking outta the side of your neck." Then Kansas was sporking away with a savage concentration.

  "Aiight, O.G. I'm hungry as a hostage."

  Kansas had to have at least two trays per meal and he got them. By the 6 P.M. head count he would have pumped out eight hundred sit-ups and five hundred push-ups. Between exercise sets he would fart out the aroma of rotten eggs.

  Leaving me to watch the sandstorms out the window and try to remember who said "hell is other people."

  * * *

  When Kansas wasn't bragging about being the "Shotcaller" back in the Kansas pen, he was yelling out the door to his wood dawgs in the other cells. When he just wanted to chat with our neighbor in cell 46, a sunken-cheeked crankhead called Big Bear, he'd scream through the air vent in the cell wall.

  "Yo, Bear, Big Bear! What's up, dawg?" Since the air ventilation system hadn't been burdened with any actual air in decades, Big Bear's response came through the metal grille clearer than an advertised Sprint call.

  "Yo, Kansas! Just kickin' it. What's up, dawg?"

  "Same old same old." Which Kansas rendered as sameol' same-o.

  "Aiight then, Kansas."

  "Aiight, Bear." End of conversation.

  Big Bear looked more like a longhaired tattooed squirrel than a bear, but prison nicknames are funny that way. These vent exchanges with Big Bear were usually initiated by Kansas, who would first pound his fist against the common wall to get Bear's attention. The pounded-wall response signaled that the jailhouse dial tone was activated.

  It took Kansas and Big Bear mere seconds to unearth such newsworthy nuggets as both dawgs were kicking it, or things were sameol' same-o. Both of them would return compulsively to this exhausted verbal terrain dozens of times a day.

  Kansas had two techniques for yelling through the door. If he didn't want the cops to spot his face at the wire-reinforced cell window, he would drop to the floor and shout under the door. There was about an inch of space between the concrete floor and
the bottom of the steel slider. When especially bored, Kansas enjoyed lying on his stomach and making animal noises through the opening. He did a great dog imitation, a passable cow, and a lousy cat.

  Usually, not caring who saw him (the "no yelling out the door" rule was rarely enforced), Kansas would just stand in front of the door and scream. Sometimes all day long.

  About that time I became an expert in constructing earplugs from wet toilet paper. I could still detect some zoo noises, but the plugs muffled the shrillest of the screams.